When American soldiers from the 42nd Rainbow Division arrived here at the town hall on Marienplatz on the afternoon of April 30, 1945, it marked the end of the Nazi era in the ‘Capital of the Movement’ and the beginning of the confrontation with what Thomas Mann called the city’s “tattered past” which is still reflected in the way the city chooses to remember it. Here is the view immediately after the war and today
taken from the top of the Neues Rathaus next to the Marienplatz showing the roofless Altes Rathaus looking
up Tal road. It was at the old town hall where, on November 9, 1938 Joseph Goebbels gave his infamous speech initiating the infamous nationwide Kristallnacht
pogroms. The roofless Heilig-Geist-Kirche is on the right of the photo and its spire, without the copper top, is behind the church. The
Talbruck gate tower had been completely destroyed by 1945 at which time just under 3% of Munich’s buildings remained unscathed from Allied carpet
bombing, which had targeted the city centre. Approximately 45% of the city's buildings had been destroyed, including more than 85,000
residential units which meant that 300,000 Munich residents were left
homeless.

Marienplatz before and after the war

From the time of the so-called Beer Hall Putsch and whilst taking a school group from Naples. Florida on a tour

The photo in the centre shows Julius
Streicher, later publisher of the “Stürmer”, speaking in support of the
putsch. The bus in the foreground transporting armed Nazis to Munich reads Hofbrauhaus F[reising].

At the Marienplatz the Nazi
column encountered a large crowd which was listening to an exhortation
of Julius Streicher, the Jew-baiter from Nuremberg, who had rushed to
Munich at the first news of the putsch. Not wishing to be left out of
the revolution, he cut short his speech and joined the rebels, jumping
into step immediately behind Hitler.

The neues rathaus with Nazi banner from 1933 and the altes rathaus on November 9, 1938 on the night of Kristallnacht.

The entrance when serving as the American occupation HQ and today. On the right is an example of Nazi propaganda on a street car August 19, 1932 whist within is a recently added inscription condemning National Socialism with this forced statement:

The National
Socialist war of extermination and conquest led the world into
disaster. Through the injustice of expulsion and by escape millions left their homelands. After 1945 Munich became for more
than 143,000 refugees their new place of residence. They
contributed considerably to the reconstruction and life of our
city.

Only a few steps away from the inscription, next to the staircase leading to the first floor, there is another plaque commemorating the Munich Jews who were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1941. Put up in November 2000, the plaque was intended to express the “sorrow and shame of Munich’ s population as well as their horror at the silence that prevailed at the time”. On November 20 1941 one thousand men, women and children were deported from Munich to Kaunas and five days later murdered by firing squad. The deportations to Kaunas marked the beginning of the systematic annihilation of Munich’s remaining Jews. Between then and February 1945 at least forty-three deportations of Jews were transported to Kaunas, Piaski, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Numerous people and institutions, including employees of the city , were involved in organising and carrying out the deportations. The memorial plaque, designed by Beate Passow, was put up on the initiative of the Munich City Archive. Parallel to this the City of Munich also donated a sign of remembrance to the memorial site in Kaunas, which Beate Passow used as a model for its Munich counterpart. The artist describes her work thus: “The pane of glass shows a photo of the memorial plaque in Kowno [Kaunas] together with portraits of Jewish citizens of Munich who were deported. The crime committed in Kowno is thus given an appropriate presence in Munich as well.” The photographs were taken from the identity cards marked with a red “J” that Jewish citizens were obliged to carry with them from 1939. In many cases these photos were the last visible traces of their owners.

On the first floor is this Memorial Room. In 1951 members of the Munich City Council belonging to the Christian Social Union, the Social Democrats and the Bavarian Party tabled a joint motion to have a plaque put up in the town hall to commemorate those members of the city administration who had fallen victim to the Third Reich or died in the two world wars. A hexagonal, chapel-like room on the first floor of the wing facing Marienplatz was proposed as a suitable location for the plaque. During the 1920s this room had already been turned into a memorial to the city officials, teachers and white and blue-collar workers killed in the First World War, but it was destroyed by bombing in 1944. The newly refurbished room was opened to the public again in 1958 when the city celebrated its 800th anniversary. In the centre of the room there is an altar-like stone table on which lies a leather-bound book listing the names of those who died in the two world wars. Inscriptions on the walls commemorate both the war dead and those who suffered political persecution under the Nazi dictatorship. A stone slab in the floor is dedicated to the “employees who died in service”. Those who fell in the two world wars were placed on a par with the victims of the Nazi regime, having supposedly suffered a similar “fate”. Questions about the circumstances in which they died or of political and moral responsibility have been ignored.

The
Munich City Council (Münchner Stadtrat) has been, since 1919, the local government and is
elected for six years and meets in New Hall. The photo on the left shows
the first meeting of July 25, 1933 of the City Hall led by the Nazis as
the sole power in the city council of 17 members with a ceremony in the
Great decorated boardroom. Among the attendees were the representative
of the State Government, the Police Headquarters, the Reichswehr, the
Protestant church council and others.

Ballroom
in the Old Town Hall, 1936 and the inscription commemorating the place
where the go-ahead was given for the November pogrom. It was put up on
the initiative of Munich’s former Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel and unveiled
in the foyer of the building in November 2000. Since this room is only
open to the public on certain occasions, a replica of the plaque was
mounted on the façade at the entrance to the building in May 2009.

Corner of the building at the entrance to Marienplatz during the Nazi-era and today showing a dragon- the Lindwurm- which was unveiled on June 21, 1907 and which represents the local legend that in the time of the plague a huge dragon had flown through Munich and his poisonous breath brought death and destruction to its inhabitants. Instead of landing on the market square, it had been bested by a single well-timed cannon shot and thus spared the city the plague.

The arch underneath the Old Town Hall then and now. Today it contains the Memorial to (German) Prisoners of War, dedicated in 1954 to those citizens of Munich who were still being held prisoner. It was unveiled at a time when 12,500 citizens of Munich were still registered as missing, many in the Soviet Union. The deliberately restrained stone relief by Franz Mikorey reflects the view of prisoners of war then prevailing in post-war Germany, showing three grieving women awaiting the return of prisoners of war (as the inscription tells us), whose sufferings should never be forgotten. The location was chosen given the central position of the Old Town Hall on Munich’s busy central square Marienplatz, which ensured that as many people would see it as possible.

After the war and with the altes rathaus behind me, and the Ludwig Beck shop being built amidst the ruins and as it appears today

The original fischbrunnen in Marienplatz was destroyed in 1944; this 1954 replacement by Josef Henselmann incorporates some of Konrad Knoll's original figures.

The Alte Rathaus as it appeared after the bombing and today. By December 17, 1944 bombs further destroyed the tower and the south wing, forcing the remains to be torn down.

Hitler's painting of the central square in Munich showing the Mariensäule and Alte Rathouse. Inside is the following plaque:

This ballroom of the Old Town Hall was for centuries the scene of magnificent civic gatherings and parties. The National Socialist regime abused this place for the planning of anti-Semitic crimes. In the course of a party meeting on the evening of November 9, 1938, a Germany-wide pogrom was instigated here leading to anti-Jewish riots. As "Kristallnacht," this pogrom was the preliminary stage of the destruction of European Jewry

to his regular café, the Café Hoch on the Marienplatz, facing
the city hall. Until three A.M. they talked about horses, the Romanian
monarchy, punishments for reckless driving, and their future plans for
Germany’s screen and stage. After that Goebbels carried on working back
in his hotel, tired but unable to sleep.

The Peterhof and Peterskirche in 1945 and today The original church was rebuilt in the Unite

The Pschorrbräu-Bierhallen on Neuhauser/Kaufinger Straße behind the rathaus during the war when it was bombed; the site is now being redeveloped.

Auferstanden aus ruinen: The Roman-Mayr-Haus on Marienplatz and its dreadful replacement- the Galeria Kaufhof. It was here that Dr. Wilhelm Gutberlet had treated Hitler for a throat infection early in the latter's political career. Gutberlet was an astrologer, a shareholder in the Völkischer Beobachter who had been described as the “Master of the Sidereal Pendulum,” who could divine the exact degree of Jewish blood in any person; he and Hitler were close personal acquaintances. Walter Schellenberg described him in his postwar memoirs as "a Munich physician who belonged to the intimate circle around Hitler."

During the 1944 bombing of Munich, both the Alten Rathauses and the Kleine Rathaus were destroyed. The former was reconstructed by Munich architect Erwin Schleich from 1953 to 1977. On the left is Hitler's "Standesamt und Altes Rathaus Muenchen" (Civil Registry Office and Old Town Hall of Munich) painted in 1914 which recently sold for £103,000 (130,000 euros) at an auction in Nuremberg. The painting is one of about 2,000 works that Hitler painted between about 1905 and 1920 as a struggling young artist. Asked before the auction whether it was tasteless to auction the Nazi dictator's works, generally considered to be of only limited artistic merit, the auctioneers said complaints should be addressed to the sellers – two unidentified German sisters in their 70s. Apparently the original handwritten bill of sale, dated Sept. 25, 1916, had come with the painting and was a rarity for Hitler's art. That also explained the relatively high selling price, she said. But that has raised doubt among critics about the painting's provenance. They recall how hoaxer Konrad Kujau used supposed certifications of authenticity to trick some historians when he marketed what proved to be bogus "Hitler Diaries" in 1983.

The Viktualienmarkt during the Nazi-era, after the war and today

A bird's eye view of the site in 1858 and today showing the postwar development all around.

When
Marienplatz became too small as a market for cereals and other
agricultural products, the Viktualienmarkt was created by a decree
issued by King Maximilian I on 2. May, 1807. In the course of time many
additions were made to the market, as for example a butchers' hall, a
tripe hall, pavilions for bakeries, fruit vendors and a fish hall.
During World War II this square with its cosy atmosphere was severely
damaged. There was even talk of closing down the market in order to
erect multi-story buildings on this important site. Instead, the
municipal authorities revitalised Viktualienmarkt with considerable
financial support, and the citizens of Munich enriched it with memorial
fountains for the folk singers and comedians Karl Valentin, Weiß Ferdl
and Liesl Karlstadt. Later, memorial fountains for the folk singers and
comedians Ida Schumacher, Elise Aulinger and Roider Jackl were added.

The Frauenkirche,
or Church of Our Lady, is Munich's main cathedral and with its
distinctive twin towers, is also one of the main landmarks in the city. Showing the area before and after the "New Town Hall" was built between 1867 and 1908 and in 1945 immediately after the war and today, it replaced an earlier church of the
13th century being built in 1468-88 under the direction of the German
architect Jorg von Halsbach. The two towers were completed in 1488 and
the church was consecrated in 1494. However, the building's famous domes
atop each tower were not added until 1525. According to a legend, the church’s architect struck a deal with the devil. The devil was to provide the money to complete the church, as long as the church would be built without any visible windows. And indeed, the building is designed with a point in the foyer from which not a single window can be seen. Finding out that he was tricked, the furious devil stomped his foot and left an imprint in the pavement, which can still be seen, before he stormed off. The cathedral suffered
severe damage during the war - the roof collapsed and one of the
towers suffered severe damage as shown on the right with my uncle demonstrating the building today after a major restoration effort which began after
the war and which was carried out in several stages, the last of which coming
to an end in 1994.

The interior then and now- after bombing in 1944, and a procession going past led by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber 31.v.1945.

Hitler in triumph down Munich's Maxburgstrasse towards Marienplatz after the return of Memel, March 26, 1939 and with Drake Winston today. This achievement had

restored the East Prussian frontier, in the Memel region, to the line confirmed by Napoleon and the Russians in their treaty at Tilsit-on-the-Niemen in 1807. This line in turn was recognised by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and it was the identical boundary established at the Peace of Thorn in 1466 between Poland-Lithuania and the German Order of Knights. It was evidentthat the March 1939 Memel agreement was a conservative step rather than a radical innovation. The Allied victors at Paris in 1919 had detached Memel from East Prussia. They had seized a city which in the seven centuries of its history had never been separated from its East Prussian homeland.

Hoggan (219-220) Forced War

Drake Winston in front of St. Michael's church at the same location. Just around the corner is the Polizeipräsidium (Hauptant - Oberstes ϟϟ und Polizeigericht):

The blood flag being triumphantly reclaimed from the police headquarters on Ettstraße where it had been confiscated after the Beer Hall putsch attempt a decade earlier.This is where the Nazis' bureaucracy of oppression started, at Ettstraße 2. In
July 1932, Heydrich's counterintelligence service grew into an
effective machine of terror and intimidation. With Hitler agitating for
absolute power in Germany, Himmler and Heydrich wished to control the
political police forces of all 17 German states, and they began with the
state of Bavaria. In 1933, Heydrich gathered some of his men from the
SD and together they stormed police headquarters in Munich and took
over the police using intimidation tactics. Himmler became commander of
the Bavarian political police with Heydrich as his deputy. In his funeral eulogy for Heydrich in 1942, Himmler stated

After
we came to power, I became Munich police chief on March 12, 1933. I
immediately gave Heydrich the so-called political division of the
presidium. In no time he re-organized the division, and in a few weeks
transformed it into the Bavarian Political Police. Soon the division
became a model for political police departments in non-Prussian German
territory. On April 20, 1934, the Prussian Minister President, our
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, appointed me to lead the State Police of
Prussia and appointed ϟϟ Brigadeführer
Heydrich as my deputy. In 1936 the Führer appointed 32-year-old
Heydrich chief of the newly created Security Police. Besides the
secret police, he was responsible for all of the criminal police.

From there, the duo moved on to the police forces of the 16 remaining German states.When
this prison became overcrowded, the police established the first Nazi
concentration camp at Dachau outside Munich on March 20, 1933.

This was also the location for the German TV series “Derrick”. In April 2013 it was revealed that the star, Horst Tappert, had joined the infamous 3.ϟϟ-Panzergrenadier-Division Totenkopf, then employed on the Eastern Front, in March 1943. Historian Jan Erik Schulte, an expert on the history of the ϟϟ, said that the circumstances of Tappert's membership in the ϟϟ and the question of whether he was pressured or coerced to join remain unclear. The "Liebstandarte" division was the premier fighting unit of the Waffen-ϟϟ, officered by committed Nazis and guilty of numerous war crimes and atrocities (especially on the Eastern Front).

Exhibition on „Die Münchner Polizei und der Nationalsozialismus“ with Drake Winston pointing at the same spot used in the poster. On the corner of Ettstraße and Neuhauserstraße is an example of the 'aryanisation' of Jewish businesses:

"Now Aryan"- newspaper advertisement for the Lindner photo shop

Further along is a reminder of the boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933, that of Bamberger and Hertz on Kaufingerstraße 22.

The Nazi authorities were quite sensitive to public opinion, and responded to public disquiet over Nazi policy towards the Catholic Church, for instance, by moderating policy. Similarly, after the initial failure of the economic boycott in April 1933, Nazi policy on Jews was ratcheted up gradually with one eye to public reactions. The fact that the authorities nevertheless continued increasing the level of persecution of Jews indicates both the centrality of antisemitism to Nazi ideology, but also the relative apathy with which non-Jewish Germans regarded the fate of their Jewish fellow citizens. There was simply not the same degree of outrage and resistance that there was on other issues.

Beller (87) Antisemitism

At Kaufingerstraße 15 the J. Speier shoe shop was attacked during Kristallnacht. Compared with how it appeared November 10, 1938 the building has completely changed due to the post-war reconstruction of central Munich but it still sells shoes.

The pogrom of November 1938, known as the “Kristallnacht” (Night of Broken Glass), or “Reichspogromnacht”, marked the beginning of the final murderous phase of the persecution of the Jews. Following the terrible events of 9/10 November 1938, which are today recalled by a commemorative plaque in the Old Town Hall, the Jews finally lost all their remaining rights. They were forbidden to visit theatres, cinemas, restaurants, museums or parks. Their driving licences were withdrawn, their telephones were cut off and they were forbidden to keep pets or use public transport. This persecution redoubled Jewish efforts to emigrate, and by 1942 almost eight thousand of Munich’s Jews had fled. However, starting in November 1941, close to three thousand citizens of Munich were deported to Kaunas (Lithuania), Piaski (Poland), Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, where they were murdered. Their memory is preserved by a commemorative plaque in the New Town Hall intended to express the sorrow and shame of the people of Munich and their horror at the silence that surrounded the persecution and deportations at the time.

The Bürgersaal Church towards Karlstor on Kaufingerstrase contains the tomb of Rupert Mayer, a Jesuit priest and noted Nazi opponent who was beatified in 1987.

The
prayer and assembly hall of the Marian Men’s Congregation was one of
the places where Mayer preached and is also where he is buried. For some
it has become a place of pilgrimage and remembrance. After several
trials and detention in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp the
unyielding priest was held under arrest at the Ettal Monastery in Upper
Bavaria until the end of the war. After the war he returned to Munich,
where he died on All Saints’ Day 1945 after suffering a stroke whilst
giving a sermon. He was initially buried at the Jesuit Cemetery in
Pullach, but three years later his remains were transferred to the crypt
of the Bürgersaal Church in a ceremony attended by 120,000 people. The
museum at the back of the church documenting the life and work of the
pastor was opened in 2008.

Karlstor, part of a large 14th century city wall that was removed in around 1800. Since then, the gate has served as the centrepiece of a new square, Karlsplatz (or Stachus), located between the central rail station and Marienplatz, representing the very centre of the city.Shown on the left in 1936 during a march by Germans and Italian fascists and in flames during the war from Albert Fessler's Das brennende München mit dem Blick auf das Karlstor, 1944.

Hitler being driven through Karlstor after the return of Memel, March 26, 1939

Before the Polish crisis unfolded, Hitler had one other triumph to register – though compared with what had gone before, it was a minor one. The incorporation of Memelland in the German Reich was now to prove the last annexation without bloodshed. After its removal from Germany in 1919, the Memel district, with a mainly German population but a sizeable Lithuanian minority, had been placed under French administration. The Lithuanians had marched in, forcing the withdrawal of the French occupying force there in January 1923. The following year, under international agreement, the Memel had gained a level of independence, but remained in effect a German enclave under Lithuanian tutelage. Politically, the return of the territory to Germany was of no great significance. Even symbolically, it was of relatively little importance. Few ordinary Germans took more than a passing interest in the incorporation of such a remote fleck of territory into the Reich. But the acquisition of a port on the Baltic, with the possibility that Lithuania, too, might be turned into a German satellite, had strategic relevance. Alongside the subordination to German influence of Slovakia on the southern borders of Poland, it gave a further edge to German pressure on the Poles.On 20 March, Ribbentrop subjected the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Joseph Urbšys, to the usual bullying tactics. Kowno would be bombed, he threatened, if Germany’s demand for the immediate return of the Memel were not met. Urbšys returned the next day, 21 March, to Kowno. The Lithuanians were in no mood for a fight. A Lithuanian delegation was sent to Berlin to arrange the details. ‘If you apply a bit of pressure, things happen,’ noted Goebbels, with satisfaction.Hitler left Berlin the following afternoon, 22 March, for Swinemünde, where, along with Raeder, he boarded the cruiser Deutschland. Late that evening, Ribbentrop and Urbšys agreed terms for the formal transfer of the Memel district to Germany. Hitler’s decree was signed the next morning, 23 March. He was back in Berlin by noon next day. This time, he dispensed with the hero’s return. Triumphal entries to Berlin could not be allowed to become so frequent that they were routine.

Kershaw, Hitler

The photo on the left shows it during the Tag der Deutschen Kunst of June 10, 1938 and the right showing Germans being marched into captivity after the war.

Hitler's supposed painting of the monument with what was left of it after the war.

A brownshirt preventing anyone from entering the offices of Jewish lawyers Dr. Th. Erlanger, Ludwiger Erlanger, and Dr. Adolf Mayer with stickers reading "Jude!" over each man's sign at Karlsplatz 8 on April 1, 1933 and the site today during yet another terror attack Friday July 22, 2016. According to Kershaw,

Heinrich
Rothschild Hat store; corner of Sendlingerstr./Färbergraben

[t]he boycott itself was less than the success that Nazi propaganda claimed. Many Jewish shops had closed for the day anyway. In some places, the SA men posted outside ‘Jewish’ department stores holding placards warning against buying in Jewish shops were largely ignored by customers. People behaved in a variety of fashions. There was almost a holiday mood in some busy shopping streets, as crowds gathered to see what was happening. Groups of people discussed busy shopping streets, as crowds gathered to see what was happening. Groups of people discussedthe pros and cons of the boycott. Not a few were opposed to it, saying they would again patronize their favourite stores. Others shrugged their shoulders. ‘I think the entire thing is mad, but I’m not bothering myself about it,’ was one, perhaps not untypical, view heard from a non-Jew on the day. Even the SA men seemed at times rather half-hearted about it in some places. In others, however, the boycott was simply a cover for plundering and violence. For the Jewish victims, the day was traumatic – the clearest indication that this was a Germany in which they could no longer feel ‘at home’, in which routine discrimination had been replaced by state-sponsored persecution.

Panzerkampfwagen V Panther tank outside the Imperial Lichtspiele cinema across the street from Karlstor, now the Anna Hotel.

The same tank parked at the Stachus with the Karlstor in the background. Considered one of the best tanks of the Second World War for its excellent firepower and protection, the Panther was intended to counter the Soviet T-34 and to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV although, it served alongside both the Panzer IV and the heavier Tiger I until the end of the war. Its reliability however was less impressive. According to Albert Speer in his autobiography,

Since the Tiger had originally been designed to weigh fifty tons but as a result of Hitler's demands had gone up to fifty seven tons, we decided to develop a new thirty ton tank whose very name, Panther, was to signify greater agility. Though light in weight, its motor was to be the same as the Tiger's, which meant it could develop superior speed. But in the course of a year Hitler once again insisted on clapping so much armour on it, as well as larger guns, that it ultimately reached forty eight tons, the original weight of the Tiger.

Speer (325) Inside the Third Reich

Hitler's supposed watercolour from 1913 of the Sendlinger Tor and the view today. The original owner of the painting on the left was a teacher from Ingolstadt, Friedrich Echinger,

who sold several paintings to the NSDAP archives for RM 5000. a piece, by far the best art investment Echinger ever made.

Gaab (130) Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History : Beer, Culture, & Politics

Hitler's sketch of the Isartor and me in front.

After the war under American occupation and today from the same spot. Through the gate one enters Tal Road:

Hitler's
painting of Tal Road looking towards Marienplatz with
Heilig-Geist-Kirche on the left and the alte rathaus straight ahead.

As he
had done in Vienna, he developed a routine where he could complete a picture every two or three
days, usually copied from postcards of well-known tourist scenes in Munich – including the
Theatinerkirche, the Asamkirche, the Hofbräuhaus, the Alter Hof, the Münzhof, the Altes Rathaus,
the Sendlinger Tor, the Residenz, the Propyläen – then set out to find customers in bars, cafés, and
beerhalls. His accurate but uninspired, rather soulless watercolours were, as Hitler himself later
admitted when he was German Chancellor and they were selling for massively inflated prices, of
very ordinary quality. But they were certainly no worse than similar products touted about the
beerhalls, often the work of genuine art students seeking to pay their way. Once he had found his
feet, Hitler had no difficulty finding buyers. He was able to make a modest living from his
painting and exist about as comfortably as he had done in his last years in Vienna. When the Linz
authorities caught up with him in 1914, he acknowledged that his income – though irregular and
fluctuating – could be put at around 1,200 Marks a year, and told his court photographer Heinrich
Hoffmann at a much later date that he could get by on around 80 Marks a month for living costs
at that time.

Kershaw Hitler

Supposedly
the oldest hotel in the centre of Munich when it was founded in 1470 as
the Hotel Thaltor, the Hotel Torbräu was where the SA and ϟϟ recruited
and drank throughout the 1920s. The SA
swore allegiance to Hitler in May 1923 and the precursor to the SS, the
Stosstrupp Hitler, was established in the basement here in 1925. The
Isartor is seen directly behind me.

Hitler’s
first bodyguard was replaced with a new one in May of 1923, the
Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler. Its members by and large came from a differing
social and age group (older) than the quite young SA. The initial leader
of this group was Julius Schreck, a man who superficially resembled
Hitler and later served as his double from time to time. These recruits
were later described by one of their own: “Hard and rough and sometimes
quite uncouth were the customs, habits, and looks of the Stosstrup. They
did not know ... grovelling. They clung to the right of the stronger,
the old right of the fist. In an emergency they knew no command.... When
... called to action— to attack right and left—march! march!—then
things were torn to bits and in minutes streets and squares were swept
of enemies.... Soon we were known in village and town.”

Joseph
Berchtold, the first “Reichsführer-SS,” spoke of this and the next site
across the street when recalling the events of the so-called Beer Hall
Putsch:

Adolf
Hitler chose the day of von Kahr's great meeting for his attempt. About
eleven o'clock on the morning of the 8th of November I got the order to
stand ready for the National Revolution. " My men took a last oath, to
serve true to death if needs be, and we got our final instructions from
Captain Goering. I busied myself all day with preparations, and then at
six in the evening assembled the troops, in instant readiness for action
in the Torbrau, opposite the Sterneckerbrau. I harangued my fellows,
`Any one of you,' I said, `who isn't going into this thing heart and
soul had better get out right now.' As no one budged by so much as an
inch, I pursued, `It's our job, as Shock Troops, to bear the brunt of
what's coming. We're going to run the Government out. Hitler and Kahr
are united over this, they are going to set up another one .' Everyone
of us gripped hands, and we were ready.

Heinz (154) Germany's Hitler

The Sterneckerbräu, so-called 'cradle of the Movement' was located in Munich's old town in the Tal 38 (originally 54) on the corner of Sterneckerstraße, very close to the Isartor. The present building originally covered three plots of land. In Jakob Sandtner's model of the city of Munich from 1570, three two-story houses can be seen. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the house at the corner of Tal and Sterneckergasse was owned by the beer brewer family Sternegger, after whom the road is named since 1696. A brewery had been there since 1557. In the 19th century, the corner house and its eastern neighbour were replaced by a four-story building with a classical façade. This was demolished in 1901, and in 1901/02, the present building was built on the site of these two buildings and an additional adjoining plot. The building was built by Heilmann & Littmann for the brewer Joseph Höcherl. Sterneckerbräu was the lowest category of beer house and gained fame and historical significance only because Anton Drexler founded the German Workers' Party (DAP) on January 5, 1919, together with Karl Harrer. It met once a week in the restaurant on the first floor of the new building. On 12 September 1919, Adolf Hitler attended a meeting of the DAP on behalf of the intelligence command of the army. The meeting took place in a meeting room of the Sterneckerbräu. Drexler invited him to join the DAP. Hitler accepted on that date, becoming the party's 555th member (Wikipedia says he was member 55, but membership began at number 500 to make it appear that the party had more members). In October 1919, the first branch of the DAP, which in February 1920 changed its name to the Nazi Party (NSDAP), was set up in a side room of the Sterneckerbräu. In 1921, the Bavarian nationalist and royalist league In Treue fest was founded at the Sterneckerbräu. It was banned by the Nazis on 2 February 1933, and later re-established in 1952. On 8 November 1933, Hitler opened the Museum of the Nazi Party at the Sterneckerbräu, which was also mentioned in the Baedeker. The first inventory and office furniture, as well as the members' rooms, can still be viewed there. Every year on November 8, 1933 the solemn
procession dedicated to the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch passed the Sterneckerbräu at which point marchers stopped
for one minute. The building survived the war. In 1957 the restaurant was closed and the first floor was converted into a store whilst currently preserved rooms are now used as office space.

This
is where Hitler first came across the German Workers' Party (DAP) on
September 12, 1919 whilst serving in the intelligence section of the
German army. When the DAP chief, Anton Drexler, signed the Party
membership form he wrote "Hittler" with two ts. This is also
significant as being the site where the Nazi Party was originally
organised on 24 February 1920.

It can
scarcely have been a very impressive scene when, on the evening of 12
September 1919, Hitler attended his first meeting in a room at the
Sterneckerbrau, a Munich beer-cellar in which a handful of twenty or
twenty-five people had gathered. One of the speakers was Gottfried
Feder, an economic crank well known in Munich, who had already impressed
Hitler at one of the political courses arranged for the Army. The other
was a Bavarian separatist, whose proposals for the secession of Bavaria
from the German Reich and a union with Austria brought Hitler to his
feet in a fury. He spoke with such vehemence that when the meeting was
over Drexler went up to him and gave him a copy of his autobiographical
pamphlet, Mein politisches Erwachen. A few days later Hitler received a postcard inviting him to attend a committee meeting of the German Workers' Party.

Of this first visit, Hitler wrote the following in Chapter IX: The 'German Workers' Party' in Mein Kampf:

In
the evening when I entered the 'Leiber Room' of the former
Sterneckerbrau in Munich, I found some twenty to twenty-five people
present, chiefly from the lower classes of the population.Feder's lecture was known to me from the courses, so I was able to devote myself to an inspection of the organisation itself.My
impression was neither good nor bad; a new organisation like so many
others. This was a time in which anyone who was not satisfied with
developments and no longer had any confidence in the existing parties
felt called upon to found a new party. Everywhere these organisations
sprang out of the ground, only to vanish silently after a time. The
founders for the most part had no idea what it means to make a party-let
alone a movement out of a club. And so these organisations nearly
always stifle automatically in their absurd philistinism.

The meeting didn’t impress Hitler, but he was given a
brochure titled “My Political Awakening” by founder
Anton Drexler, and he read it nonetheless. Hitler was invited to the next meeting of the DAP at the Altes Rosenbad
Inn and he was again ordered to attend and even join the
tiny party by his Intelligence superior, Capt. Karl Mayr.

Standing in front with the Isartor and Hotel Torbrau behind. After joining, Hitler was said to have established an
office there in a former barroom with a light, telephone,
table, a few chairs on loan, a bookcase and borrowed cup-
boards. Thus, what would become the first HQ of the
future Nazi Party was born, after Hitler changed its name,
direction and leadership. Hitler would also write in Mein Kampf when he rented the site to serve as the party offices that:

In
the old Sterneckerbräu im Tal, there was a small room with arched
roof, which in earlier times was used as a sort of festive tavern where
the Bavarian Counsellors of the Holy Roman Empire foregathered. It was
dark and dismal and accordingly well suited to its ancient uses,
though less suited to the new purpose it was now destined to serve.
The little street on which its one window looked out was so narrow
that even on the brightest summer day the room remained dim and
sombre. Here we took up our first fixed abode. The rent came to fifty
marks per month, which was then an enormous sum for us. But our
exigencies had to be very modest. We dared not complain even when they
removed the wooden wainscoting a few days after we had taken
possession. This panelling had been specially put up for the Imperial
Counsellors. The place began to look more like a grotto than an
office.

Standing at the entrance in 2010 on the side street off Tal.

From
1933 the Sternecker housed a NSDAP museum, opened November 8 that year by Hitler himself. Today it serves Apple which
may be appropriate, given that in Latin the words for 'apple' ("mālum")
and for 'evil' ("malum") are nearly identical. One particularly incisive piece from the New York Times revealed the way the company exploits its own foreign workforce in Chinese concentration camps.

Hermann Otto Hoyer's 1937 representation of Hitler's political beginnings set in the Leiber Room of the Sterneckerbräu, Am Anfang war das Wort (In the Beginning Was the Word) for the Great German Art Exhibition at the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. Note how Hitler’s arms are bent in the form of the swastika, matching that on the flag which hanging directly behind him. The lighting over Hitler seems to fall directly onto the audience, having him represent the bringer of light and further hint at the audience's 'enlightenment,' evoking the Pentecost. In the summer of 1920 alone Hitler had given the following speeches
here: 'Nationalism' (June 9), "About the Political Situation" (June 16),
"Spa and Moscow" (July 28) and "Financial Questions" (August 6).

The Hofbräuhaus

Hitler's painting of the Hofbräuhaus and standing in front today. It
was here on April 13, 1919 (Palm Sunday) that the soldiers' councils proclaimed the Bavarian Soviet
Republic in the festsaal. The Hofbräuhaus was one of the beer halls used by the Nazi
Party for functions and holds a particular significance in its
mythology. The
DAP—the future Nazi Party—held its first mass meeting there on October
16, 1919—less than a year after the war’s end—with an audience of
seventy people. On February 24, 1920, in its Festival Hall, Hitler
presented the Twenty-five Points that formed the political base of the
Nazis (as they came to be called; it is an abbreviation of the Party’s
full name, just as the Socialists were called Sozis)—this time with two
thousand in attendance.

Despite worries about the attendance at the party’s first big meeting, some 2,000 people
(perhaps a fifth of them socialist opponents) were crammed into the Festsaal of the Hofbräuhaus
on 24 February when Hitler, as chairman, opened the meeting. Dingfelder’s speech was
unremarkable. Certainly, it was un-Hitler-like in style and tone. The word ‘Jew’ was never
mentioned. He blamed Germany’s fate on the decline of morality and religion, and the rise of
selfish, material values. His recipe for recovery was ‘order, work, and dutiful sacrifice for the
salvation of the Fatherland’. The speech was well received and uninterrupted. The atmosphere
suddenly livened when Hitler came to speak. His tone was harsher, more aggressive, less
academic, than Dingfelder’s. The language he used was expressive, direct, coarse, earthy – that
used and understood by most of his audience – his sentences short and punchy. He heaped insults
on target-figures like the leading Centre Party politician and Reich Finance Minister Matthias
Erzberger (who had signed the Armistice in 1918 and strongly advocated acceptance of the
detested Versailles Treaty the following summer) or the Munich capitalist Isidor Bach, sure of the
enthusiastic applause of his audience. Verbal assaults on the Jews brought new cheers from the
audience, while shrill attacks on profiteers produced cries of ‘Flog them! Hang them!’ When he
came to read out the party programme, there was much applause for the individual points. But
there were interruptions, too, from left-wing opponents, who had already been getting restless,
and the police reporter of the meeting spoke of scenes of ‘great tumult so that I often thought it
would come to brawling at any minute’. Hitler announced, to storms of applause, what would
remain the party’s slogan: ‘Our motto is only struggle. We will go our way unshakeably to our
goal.’ The end of Hitler’s speech, in which he read out a protest at an alleged decision to provide
40,000 hundredweight of flour for the Jewish community, again erupted into uproar following
further opposition heckling, with people standing on tables and chairs yelling at each other. In the
subsequent ‘discussion’, four others spoke briefly, two of them opponents. Remarks from the last
speaker that a dictatorship from the Right would be met with a dictatorship from the Left were
the signal for a further uproar, such that Hitler’s words closing the meeting were drowned.
Around 100 Independent Socialists and Communists poured out of the Hofbräuhaus on to the
streets cheering for the International and the Räterepublik and booing the war-heroes Hindenburg
and Ludendorff, and the German Nationalists. The meeting had not exactly produced the ‘hall full
of people united by a new conviction, a new faith, a new will’ that Hitler was later to describe. Nor would anyone reading Munich newspapers in the days following the meeting have gained
the impression that it was a landmark heralding the arrival of a new, dynamic party and a new
political hero. The press’s reaction was muted, to say the least. The newspapers concentrated in
their brief reports on Dingfelder’s speech and paid little attention to Hitler. Even the Völkischer
Beobachter, not yet under party control but sympathetic, was surprisingly low-key. It reported the
meeting in a single column in an inside page four days later.

Kershaw (86-7) Hitler

On Friday, August 13 1920, Hitler publicly denounced
the Jews for the first time in his Why We Are Antisemites speech, demanding their removal from Germany altogether. On November
4, 1921, there was a massive fight between the Nazis and their
opponents in the Hofbrauhaus, the so-called "Feuertaufe der SA," but Hitler managed to complete his
address, despite the chaos of smashed tables and chairs and hurled beer
mugs all about him. On February 25, 1939, Martin Bormann wrote to the Bavarian Prime Minister, Ludwig Siebert, that Hitler ordered that the Hofbräuhaus should no longer bear the addition "royal". The official name should in the future be "Das Hofbräuhaus zu München". The Hofbräuhaus was actually renamed, but instead "Staatliches Hofbräuhaus".

Hitler referred in his address the first assembly that was held at the Hofbräuhaus:

It was the first major rally our Movement had ever held in which we can say that the Volk participated.
For the first time the internal organisation was tested in a large
hall, and it worked. For the first time people came to us who wanted to
listen. We certainly had not lacked the courage to summon the masses,
but for a long time the masses lacked the courage to hear our call. It
so happened that the man from whom I had rented the hall only gave it
after I had made advance payment, although to be fair I would like to
add that the situation later changed.At
that first rally we announced our twenty-five points—which our
opponents ridiculed—for the first time, to implement them item for item
in the years thereafter. And finally, I myself spoke to a large crowd of
people for the first time in this hall, although someone had told me I
had any number of talents, but speaking was not one of them. I had to
assert myself at that large rally, which was not as well-mannered as it
is today. Things were rather primitive, and most of the men were not
wearing collars out of solidarity, so as not to attract attention.Later
my opponents conceived of the idea of calling me “the drummer” for
years afterwards. In any case, that first rally was significant in that
it was the first mass rally of our Party, it announced our programme and
produced a new speaker.

The plaque above (shown during and after the war) commemorated Hitler's speech of February 24, 1920 in which he laid out the goals of the new Nazi Party in his 25 point programme, an event later declared to have been the founding session of the NSDAP.

These were all scraps of conventional völkisch wisdom interlaced with attacks on the treaty and on the exactions of the Entente with which no German could disagree. The principles were incorporated in the party program that Hitler together with Anton Drexler and Gottfried Feder wrote out in twenty-five points and that Hitler presented to a meeting of February 24, 1920, in the Hofbräuhaus. They had appealed greatly to the party constituency even though they had no prospect whatever of being realized in any foreseeable future. The party's program enunciated among other things the right to self-determination for Germany, with equal treatment and land and colonies to feed the German people. The Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain were to be abrogated. Only racial Germans could be citizens, and racial Germans were men and women of German blood regardless of religion, so no Jew could be a Volks comrade. Battle would be waged against the corruption of the parliamentary system based on party considerations, which took no account of character and ability. Every citizen had the same rights and duties; the general need came before the individual need; only a man who worked was entitled to an income; war profits were to be confiscated, the serfdom of interest broken. Profiteers, common criminals, and black marketers were to be executed. Trusts already nationalized were to remain so. In the interest of a healthy middle class, the party platform declared that big department stores would be communalised. It demanded land reform and the abolition of speculation in land. Poor children were to be educated by the state, child labour was to be prohibited, and health services were to be provided for mothers and children and young people. A people's army was to replace mercenary troops, and a strong central authority was to be established with complete authority over the Reich and its organisations.

The plaque can be seen behind the 'blood flag' behind Hitler on left, speaking in the Hofbrauhaus on February 24, 1940, the twentieth anniversary of the formation of the NSDAP and Adolph Wagner on the right. Hitler's speech can be read here. I'm standing at the location today with the plaque being replaced with a fire escape sign.A fight that broke out on November 4 1921 made the site a Nazi shrine as it was claimed that the SA had met its baptism of fire. As Hitler wrote at the beginning of Chapter VI, The First Period of our Struggle in Mein Kampf,

During that period the hall of the Hofbrau Haus in Munich acquired for us, National Socialists, a sort of mystic significance. Every week there was a meeting, almost always in that hall, and each time the hall was better filled than on the former occasion, and our public more attentive.

The Festsaal on the third floor where, in 1920, the NSDAP held its first meeting. From Chapter VII: The Struggle with the Red Front in the Second Volume of Mein Kampf:

In the Festsaal of the Hofbräuhaus I always stood on one of the long sides of the hall and my platform was a beer table. And so I was actually in the midst of the people. Perhaps this circumstance contributed to creating in this hall a mood such as I have never found anywhere else. In front of me, especially to the left of me, only enemies were sitting and standing. They were all robust men and young fellows in large part from the Maffei factory, from Kustermann's, from the Isaria Meter Works, etc. Along the left wall they had pushed ahead close to my table and were beginning to collect beer mugs; that is, they kept ordering beer and putting the empty mugs under the table. In this way, whole batteries grew up and it would have surprised me if all had ended well this time...

Until a few years ago, above each lamp the Bavarian flag was seen in the form of a swastika, painted by Hitler's supporters after he took power. After the war the owners found they couldn't paint over them as the swastikas were still visible after several coats of paint, and so decided to 'decorate' them as oddly shaped Bavarian flags. Recently the shape itself was altered as seen in the before-and-after photos above. According to Wikipedia, the Hofbrauhaus "also held a 1889 baby photo of Hitler as recent [sic] as 2006" and furthermore, according to a post at http://worldwartwozone.com:

"There is also other interesting thing - rumour perhaps. On the left hand side of the main hall is small room with sort of a racks where locals can keep their beer steins. They wash them in a copper sink, then put into mailbox size padlocked lockers. When I visited Hofbrauhaus one of the locals told us that Hitler's stein is still there. No one knows which one it is, but is worshipped. Indeed one of the racks was decorated with green applications. Apparently faithful locals decorate it every year before Adi's birthday - 20th April"

Given that Hitler was supposedly a teetotaller, it's hard to credit that...

The day Hitler committed suicide and now showing the entrance when the site served as the Command Post for the American 45th Division. During the Second World War from 1939 to 1945 the Hofbräuhaus was almost completely destroyed by air raids starting on the night of April 25, 1944 followed by three more air raids.

Nearby is the Pfeffermühle, founded by Erika and Klaus Mann in January 1933 which satirised the Nazis before the two emigrated to New York after Hitler's seizure of power. Erika Mann defined clearly the aims of his political-satirical cabaret: “Wir wollten die Nazis bekämpfen." Only a few weeks after its highly successful premiere, the troupe had to flee from the Nazis to resume as an exile cabaret on September 30, 1933 in Zurich at the Hotel Hirschen. The second exile programme was launched on January 1, 1934, with clearer references to the Nazis followed by the third and even sharper exile programme on October 3, 1934 in Basel. One performance ended up triggering riots by Swiss Nazis, so that the performances could only be continued under police protection. The performances had attracted criticism from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1934, and various cantons even issued prohibitions on its performances. The Pfeffermühle turned its back on Switzerland and from 1935 onwards went on a tour through Czechoslovakia and the Benelux countries. Up until the last performance in Europe on August 14, 1936, the group gave 1034 performances. When Nazi pressure became too strong, Erika Mann tried to reestablish The Peppermill in New York at the start of 1937 without much success.

A few streets away from Max‑Joseph‑Platz, 27 year old Erika Mann was celebrating the première of her politico‑literary cabaret, “The Peppermill,” in the Bonbonnière, a small, somewhat dilapidated stage near the Hofbräuhaus. Mann, lashing out in supremely entertaining and successful fashion at the main players in the dawning “new age,” was as hated in Munich’s nationalist circles as her father, Thomas Mann.

Heike B. Görtemaker Eva Braun

Two supposed Hitler paintings of the Munich Opera House at Max-Joseph Platz. That on the right is a 25" by 19-3/4" painting of the same building by Hitler just after a rainstorm. It was painted in München in the first half of 1914, when Hitler lived the Josef Popp residence at 34/III Schleissheimerstrasse. Popp in an interview several years later recalled:

He began his painting straight away and stuck to his work for hours. In a couple of days I saw two lovely pictures finished and lying on the table, one of the cathedral and the other of the Theatinerkirche. After that my lodger [Hitler] used to go out early of a morning with his portfolio under his arm in search of customers.

Hitler's plan for the new opera house in Munich, part of its redevelopment under the Third Reich

The opera house during the Day of German Art of July 18, 1937. Numerous activities were scheduled for that day, such as a procession through town depicting “2,000 years of German culture” beginning witha performance of Tristan und Isolde in the Munich National Theatre to open the festivities.

After the bombing of the night of October 3, 1943 and standing in front today.

Looking at what's left of Palais Toerring from Max-Joseph Platz and the Residenz Königsbau looking the opposite way in 1946 and with my students today

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